London is a chilly city today, crisp with ice, but still I went to see The Golden Compass with a friend. It is an enjoyable adventure and I love the idea of a world where our souls are with us in the form of animal companions – daemons. I will read the books now most certainly. Bessie feels like my daemon. She is my familiar, my companion who is very much herself. A pure thing, a beast, an essence of other. I refuse to believe she does not ‘love’ me in her beast-sense, whether I am her parent or her guardian. This connection to the Other is very precious to me.

I thought about putting myself on some new on-line dating sites. But I am jaded. Everyone has so many hidden agendas. I have some too of course, I am not claiming otherwise although I try to be as honest as I can. But we are seemingly in a crazy end-time society, everyone looking for an unobtainable ideal, doomed to disappointments and deadends, while frantic for the transient entertainment of sex – but without passion, without wonderful, terrifying emotional risk.

Where does that leave me – and many disabled people who cannot match the polarising aesthetic? I say this rolling my eyes at myself of course. I am not self-pitying, and don’t know many who are. But this body fascism bites hard and sometimes when cynicism overwhelms me, all I see and sense are hordes of shallow lazy non-thinkers, keen only for what is of surface value, and passing pleasure.

Enough of my whining. I am me and I am comfortable with that. I’d rather be alone than with someone who cannot use their brain, and more importantly, cannot engage with their feelings. Someone who has lost their daemon, and lost the ability to feel alive – and share that with another.